Category Archives: Web Traffic

Consumers might “hate ads,” but not enough to pay even as little as a few cents a day to avoid them.

He reported on a survey…

When we asked consumers if they would pay $39.99 a year, which comes out to less than $4 a month, for an ad-free version of one of their favorite sites, only 2.4% said definitely yes, they would be likely to do so. And only 3.5% said they’d be very likely. In fact, 84% of the people said they’d be unlikely or not at all likely.

At the lower price of $29.99 a year, or less than $3 a month, only another 1.9% of consumers said they would be very likely to pay for an ad-free version.

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A posting on TechCrunch came with this nifty illustration about adoption of new online services the other day…

… customers and word-of-mouth referrals travel from left to right along a bell curve that starts with Innovators and Early Adopters, peaks with the Early Majority and the Late Majority, and finally permeates with reaction from Laggards.

If I read this right, the author is claiming that Digg and Twitter have about 16% market penetration. In a previous posting here, it was noted that Digg has 30 million monthly visitors, with 3 million of them registered users. Considering just the U.S. population (300 million), wouldn’t that put Digg between 1% and 10% penetration? That is, still far from moving out of the Early Adopter range?

Nearly 20% of our pilot area subscribes to Front Porch Forum, including 33% of Burlington and better than 90% of our leading neighborhoods. That puts the bulk of our service in the Early Majority area, with our best neighborhoods pushing through the Late Majority and into the Laggards.

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Cool local success, Epik, is hosting an Online Marketing (OM) Boot Camp in Burlington, VT, June 17-20. These are good folks who do great work, so I recommend it. Google and Champlain College are also co-hosting. They’re even offering some grants to cut the cost for select Vermont businesses. I’d be there if I wasn’t already booked… I’ll be co-leading a workshop about building online community at the American Press Institute based on our work with Front Porch Forum.

[Disclosure: Epik is a sponsor of Front Porch Forum.]

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I conducted a little experiment among the more than 100 folks gathered for the wedding, all of whom were quite intelligent, armed with all kinds of the latest devices (many, many people had iPhones, for example) and not sluggish about technology.

They were also made up of a wide range of ages and genders, from kids to seniors.

And so I asked a large group of people–about 30–and here is the grand total who knew what Twitter was: 0

FriendFeed: 0

Widget: 1 (but she thought it was one of the units used in a business class study).

Facebook: Everyone I asked knew about it and about half had an account, although different people used it differently.

Making a householdword is the great challenge. Not only does the word need to be universally known, but it has to be universally known for something that people need. eBay, Amazon, Google, and Craigslist are universally known, and people need what those words mean: People need to buy & sell & search in their everyday lives… As for Facebook, people need to stay in touch with people they know, so they’re on-track, but I suspect their word is too muddied with pokes & kid stuff.

About 30% of our pilot city subscribe to Front Porch Forum and many more than that have heard of and/or plan to sign up for our service. Many people appreciate help in connecting with their neighbors and plugging into their neighborhood.

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Thanks to eNeighbors for pointing to this new study by eMarketer about eMail… color me eGrateful.

U.S. spending on e-mail advertising will grow to $2 billion by 2012 from $1.2 billion in 2007.

JupiterResearch estimated that about one-quarter of e-mail delivered to users’ main inboxes is now opt-in.

JupiterResearch asked why recipients stopped subscribing to opt-in e-mails. More than one-half said the content was no longer relevant, and 40% said they were getting too many offers.

It is also getting harder for marketers to figure out which e-mail address to use. Nearly two-thirds of US Internet users have three or more active e-mail addresses, according to a November 2006 Bluestreak-commissioned study conducted by ROI Research.

“E-mail, compared with other forms of interactive communication tools, is not only ubiquitous but also addictive,” Mr. Hallerman said. According to a November 2006 ROI Research report commissioned by Bluestreak, 90% of US Internet users used e-mail several times a day. No other communication tool comes close.

What did we learn? A lot. We learned that most people do not click on ads, and those that do are by no means representative of Web users at large.Ninety-nine percent of Web users do not click on ads on a monthly basis. Of the 1% that do, most only click once a month. Less than two tenths of one percent click more often. That tiny percentage makes up the vast majority of banner ad clicks.

Who are these “heavy clickers”? They are predominantly female, indexing at a rate almost double the male population. They are older. They are predominantly Midwesterners, with some concentrations in Mid-Atlantic States and in New England. What kinds of content do they like to view when they are on the Web? Not surprisingly, they look at sweepstakes far more than any other kind of content. Yes, these are the same people that tend to open direct mail and love to talk to telemarketers.

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Interesting article in the New York Times by Louise Story today about how varied website traffic stats are… depends on who’s counting and how.

Online advertising is expected to generate more than $20 billion in revenue this year, more than double the $9.6 billion it represented as recently as 2004. Nobody doubts that the figure will grow — particularly as advertisers hone their techniques for aiming messages to particular consumers — but the question remains how much the clashing traffic figures will hold the market back.